You review: Daybreakers

The new vampire movie Daybreakers has some clever ideas, but the critics felt the Spierig brothers were more concerned with the sequel than the film in hand. What did you think: bloody brilliant or strangely insipid?

Just as Danny Boyle reinvented the zombie flick by endowing his dead-eyed killers with the ability to attack at breakneck speed in 28 Days Later, Australia's Spierig brothers have made a bold attempt to transform the vampire flick. Unfortunately for them, Daybreakers arrives in cinemas at a time when movies about undead creatures of the night are two a penny, and the critics reckon this one is a little too clunky to stand out. They are also not overly impressed by the embarrassing final act efforts to secure a sequel.

The story centres on vampire Edward (sound familiar, R-Pattz fans?), played by the always good value Ethan Hawke, a benevolent bloodsucker who does his best not to feed on humans – though it's somewhat unclear how he manages to get away with this. The date is 2020ish, when a virus has transformed most of the human population into vampires – and these, despite the film's adherence to sci-fi stylings, are traditional vampires: immortal, with pale skin and hearts that do not beat, and they burn up in the sun. For good measure, they also have no reflection, which must make dressing for work kind of tough.

Edward works as a top haematologist, whose job it is to come up with a blood substitute that will help end the chronic shortages that are leading to increasing unrest. The hope is that it will also free the remaining humans from the horrific existence most of them are now living: hooked up to tubes in vast warehouses in order to be drained of blood.

One day, while driving in his specially adapted Chrysler – which features natty screens that allow Edward to drive while the sun is up – he hits some humans on the run from the vampire army that scours the land for dwindling sources of blood. Realising that he has doomed them to a hideous fate, Edward allows the humans to shelter in his car until the authorities have passed on. Subsequently, he discovers that one of them (Willem Dafoe) may have discovered a cure for vampirism, and sets about testing it on himself.

"The Spierigs have conceived [a society] in impressive detail, a brutal mirror image of our own, with 'respectable' yuppie vampires, and a crazed, blood-starved underclass," writes our own Andrew Pulver. "They make some nice metaphysical points and commission some spiffy design, but resort to less-than-blood-heat thriller moves in the final third. Still very watchable, though."

"The vampire movie continues its interminable mutation through the movie schedules with Daybreakers," writes the Times's Kevin Maher. "This time, in a movie directed with an alarming lack of coherence, the foolhardy Spierigs spend so much time setting things up for a sequel, or possibly a franchise, that they leave the movie itself mostly in disarray."

"[The Spierigs] set the stage for a grave new world where life is designed to be lived at night," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Underground moving walkways replace sidewalks, curfew starts before dawn, and so on. [But] this intriguing premise, alas, ends as so many movies do these days, with fierce fights and bloodshed."

"There's a fascinating idea at the heart of Daybreakers, where a vampire plague has swept the world and everyone's now a bloodsucker, but it doesn't quite make for a fascinating film," writes Empire's Helen O'Hara. "A possible cure for vampirism appears instead, but with a fumbled last act and blatant appeal for a sequel, this finishes not with a bang but a whimper."

I enjoyed much of Daybreakers' examination of what a future America populated with vampires might look like – coffee that comes with a 10% blood infusion, transport systems designed to avoid sunlight. Yet the movie's attempt to shoehorn itself into a standard Hollywood action flick format (though with a lot of extra gore, it must be said) felt contrived and uncomfortable. Fans of dystopian future societies will be mollified by the Spierigs' stylish depiction of a brave new world of bloodsuckers, yet I left the cinema feeling that this potentially intelligent film had sold out. Adopting sci-fi tropes seems bizarre when dealing with creatures who continue to walk around when their hearts have stopped. Could the Spierigs not have shifted the traditional concept of vampires more dramatically?

Have you had the chance to catch Daybreakers? The film arrived in cinemas on Wednesday, and is no doubt overshadowed by Avatar. But if you caught it, was it bloody brilliant, or strangely insipid?